Bitcoin's First Quantum-Resistant Transaction
The first post-quantum resistant Bitcoin (BTC) transaction is now live on Bitcoin mainnet. Starkware announced it at Bitcoin Asia. The transaction, called a QSB transaction, was submitted the night before the announcement and was mined about 5 hours before the reveal by Marathon (Mario) Slipstream. It needed no soft forks, no hard forks, and no core protocol upgrades.
Solving the quantum problem for Bitcoin was always a matter of when, not if. Bitcoin is software, so it can be upgraded and will outlast the quantum threat. Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh has said the open questions are just technical details of exactly what to do.
What the product does and does not do
This tool works like a parachute in a plane flying through a quantum storm, or a doomsday bunker facing a quantum threat. It is not a cure for quantum. It is opt-in. Coins that have lost their private keys, or coins lost from circulation, cannot be moved into an address with QSB enabled.
If you control your keys, you can upgrade your software and be safe. The risk falls only on those who do not control their keys. About 5% of the Bitcoin supply - including coins tied to Satoshi, who is dead, gone, or has lost the keys - could in theory be stolen in a quantum hack. That case is not solved yet.
Cost
Making one quantum-safe transaction costs roughly $150 to $200 with current methods, so it is expensive right now. This is early and the costs will be worked out over time. Starkware is not the only company working on a solution. On-chain records show the live transaction moved a 10,000 Satoshi input (a Satoshi is the smallest unit of a Bitcoin), and over 50% of that amount was used up in fees.
Money Flowing Back Into Crypto
Big money is returning to the crypto market. Bitcoin (BTC) is up another 2%, driven by institutional demand. Bitcoin ETFs bought almost $1 billion of Bitcoin so far this week.
Solana (SOL) is up almost 12% on the day. Its fundamentals are improving, with 5 million daily active addresses, showing the network is being used. Solana's growth in activity is far greater than Tron (TRX), BNB Chain (BNB), Ethereum (ETH), and Robinhood Chain. Charles Schwab (SCHW) added Solana to Schwab Crypto, giving direct Solana access to over 39.9 million brokerage accounts holding 13 trillion dollars in client assets. Schwab also plans to add Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Chainlink (LINK) - three cryptos beyond just Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Bittensor (TAO) is up almost 10% on the day and just crossed $250, posting the largest 24-hour gain among the top 50 on CoinMarketCap. TAO was one of five coins picked as the best to invest $10,000 in crypto in 2026 (picked at the start of the year). The move follows news that Nvidia (NVDA) agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. Open-source projects - OpenRouter, Poolside, Hugging Face - are getting acquired. Bittensor is open source and decentralized, and investors will eventually link it to this trend.
Ethena (ENA) is up 22% in the last 24 hours. The Athena (Ethena) Foundation bought out its seed investors' locked tokens and revamped the ecosystem, removing the worry of a market dump from early investors selling. It also proposed a fee switch for ENA token buybacks. Buying back tokens and turning up fees helps holders.
VeChain (VET) is pumping after a project-specific boost on August 27th from a partnership with a major Asian logistics firm focused on supply chain transparency.
Ethereum as a Global Computer
Ethereum (ETH) is growing bigger and stronger. It has over 24,000 nodes identified, over 900,000 validators, and 11-plus years with no chain halt. It has no owner, no list, no counterparty risk, and no off switch, shaping up as the global world computer.
Market View
Crypto is one of the simplest ways to get rich - simple, though not easy - by buying and holding. It is a global asset class with maybe 10% penetration in the US, largely among young people, but less than 1% global penetration. Early investors in AI are the ones getting rich there because those companies already carry huge valuations, while crypto is worldwide and one of the fastest growing asset classes in human history.
Bitcoin is now consolidating a little under the 50-week moving average. Any pullback that stays above the 69 to 71 level marks a reaccumulation zone and a higher low. The market is currently in consolidation.
One note on a mentioned pre-IPO platform, Jarzy: it offers retail investors access to pre-IPO companies through tokenized shares backed one-to-one by real equity held in custody. These tokens are not legal equity and give no voting rights, only price exposure. It has been written up in Forbes.
